Before the draft, he scored a spot at the N.F.L.’s International Player Pathway program, a 12-week training camp for foreign athletes who mostly have not played American football.

Nielsen ratings data found the NFL had 82 of the 100 most-watched programs on American TV in 2022, and all but one of the top 20. The other was President Biden’s State of the Union address.

The Journal of the American Medical Assn. counted 12 deaths from football in 1902, and at the conclusion of the 1905 season the Chicago Tribune tallied the season’s “death harvest”: 159 ...